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Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, day 10

Least Favourite Companion

Aw, really, do I have to do this? u.u

So, first off I have to say I tend to like them all, or at the very least find them interesting... Especially the regulars - Rose, Martha, Donna, Clara, River... Even Amy and Rory - but I guess this does kind of answer my question, right?

It’s not that I don’t like her character, or in general - I guess I just don’t appreciate how her entire life was dominated by the Doctor from start to finish. She had this remarkable experience with him when she was just a child - he was late, and she waited years for them - but I feel like it’s a bit tiresome to see how little of Amy remains if you take away the Doctor. 

As much as travelling with the Doctor brings a lot to everyone’s lives - how Donna’s personality developed, how Rose had her life turned around - they all had their own thing going on before it all started. Not Amelia. She went to child psychologists because she believed in a man in a blue box. She waited around. She has vague jobs, lives in a nondescript house during her “down time”... It only goes to show how the Doctor is ultimately responsible for what happens to her, and how recklessly he acted just getting into a child’s life like that. Of course, it was just after regenerating, so a bit of insanity can be excused. But even so, it feels like the character of Amy was too much defined by the Doctor (the same happens to River, in some extent, and it keeps getting worse the more bakstory we have from her) for me to be completely comfortable with...

(Please don’t kill me, it’s not that I don’t like her, I just wish she could have a chance to develop in her own terms a bit more.)

This being said, I really liked the way she and the Doctor parted ways - and this is mainly because Amy, for the first time, actively chose to get the Doctor out of her life because she found something that was more important to her than being with her ‘raggedy man’, and that’s some character growth.

Join the challenge! :) 

[lilydragonwrites]

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, day 9

Favourite regeneration

So not the favourite Doctor, but the favourite regeneration scene? Hmm, this is interesting. 

So here’s a music video of all regenerations so far, so we can all refresh our minds. 

The most touching, of course, is Ten’s regeneration into Eleven because, well...

But I’m still very fond of Nine’s regeneration into Ten, with his delightful final speech: 

But when it comes to the idea of the regeneration, my favourite is still of the Second into the Third Doctor, because the circumstances are so remarkable: he’s actually being sentenced to death and exile (at the same time, lol) by the hands of the Time Lords because of taking an active role in fighting against injustices in the world... Look at you, Doctor, quite the political prisoner. 

Join the challenge! :)

[lilydragonwrites]

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, day 8

Saddest moments

Ok, I’m using the plural very liberally here, because there are SO many sad moments on Doctor Who, which have made me tear up (and some still do, every time I watch it). So maybe one per season, so I don’t spend the whole day crying about Doctor Who?

1x06 - Dalek - the Dalek asks Rose for permission to die.

It’s not in this moment precisely, but this episode is filled with so many FEELS that it’s hard to pick a moment. Maybe when the case opens up and the changed dalek just wants to enjoy the sun, and asks Rose permission to die... Jeez, everything in this episode is heartbreaking. 

2x13 - Doomsday - THAT scene on the wall + their goodbye in Bad Wolf Bay.

FFS, this sad moment even has its own heartbreaking theme to go with it. 

Yes, you know the moment I’m talking about. Not so much of Rose almost falling into the void, but how they act after the breach closes...

Now I’ve watched it again on youtube and I almost teared up. Thanks, challenge, for messing with my feels.

The differences in their reactions is what makes it so sad. Rose is angry, crying, while the Doctor just grows cold and still, but you can hear his heart breaking, his very soul shattering at what happened... And their unfulfilling goodbye, oh Gods, don’t even get me started on that. It’s sad. SO SAD!

3x13 - Last of the Time Lords - the Master dies in the Doctor’s arms.

No matter if you watch it with or without your shipping goggles, this scene just breaks my heart. The Master, who avoided death so much he subjected himself to horrible things to get another body, choosing to die because he won’t be the Doctor’s prisoner... You can see the Doctor having glimpses of a future together with an equal, living in the TARDIS with him, and suddenly it’s taken away... His childhood friend and nemesis, dying in his arms. Of course they come back ( the Master always comes back!) but this scene... Sigh. And one again, the music! “This is Gallifrey” is my favourite music from the whole Doctor Who soundtrack, and it’s a perfect place to play it. 

Basically the entire 4th season

Oh, the fourth season - it’s especially hard, considering all the feels that Donna brings us. We have the ‘song of captivity’ scene with the Oods, Donna kicking the Doctor’s ass in The Fires of Pompeii for not wanting to invervene, Jenny dying in “The Doctor’s Daughter”, River’s first appearance (and death) in the Library, oh god, the whole chain of events leading to the finale!  The Doctor’s suicide in “Turn Left”, Donna’s death, the Doctor trying to escape his death throughout the season in a constantly more desperate way...

Ok, this season was pretty dark. 

But if you’re expecting I’ll talk about the end of Journey’s End, bout what he did to Donna - no, that doesn’t make me sad. It makes me angry and a bit sick.

But the afterneath, oh gods...

Yes, maybe it’s sad, but in a whole different way. Oh Gods, Donna...

Specials - 3 The Waters of Mars - Adelaide’s suicide.

The Time Lord Victorious is wrong, and that darkness is heartbreaking as soon as he realises exactly what he’s done.

Bonus scene because I can’t help myself:

Vale Decem!(Farewell Ten - the Doctor regenerates.) 

OK, I can’t even with this episode... The Master broken and wounded, but still dangerous. The Doctor and the Master wondering what their lives would be without each other. The Master’s sacrifice. Ten’s moment of weakness right before he does the right thing and saves Wilf. His last chance to see and help his friends. His last visit to Rose. The ood singing him to sleep. I didn’t even watch any videos and I’m already crying. help! 

Ok, now that I’ve cried all over season 4, let’s get on quickly with the other seasons, at least for fairness’ sake.

Now, I don’t really remember all that many plotlines from Eleven’s era, so I’ll just enumerate them:

5 x-02 - The Beast Below - when we find out that the ship is being powered by a tortured gigant space whale. 

6 x 04 - The Doctor’s wife - when the TARDIS gets the chance to talk to her thief briefly before she loses human shape.

7 x 01 - Asylum of the Daleks - when we find out Clara’s double in the future is a Dalek.

Of course, there’s ‘The Angels take Manhattan” and Amy’s letter goodbye, which is also a touching moment, but at least she lived an interesting, full life with Rory...

8th season - the feels are back. 

Twelve sounds a bit darker overall, and the eight season had some interesting moment of shredding our heartstrings, like:

8 x 01 - Deep Breath - Eleven’s message to Clara right before he regenerates, about her accepting the new him.

8 x 02 - Into the Dalek - the Doctor wonderin whether he’s a good man, and the Dalek being transformed by having seen beauty...

8 x 04 - Listen - Scared Time Tot Doctor crying himself to sleep. That was harsh. 

9th Season - the feels are here to stay.

9 x 10 - Face the Raven - let me be brave. Let me be brave...

9 x 11 - Heaven sent - the entire. Freaking. Episode. 

9 x 12 - Hell Bent - the end of the universe with Ashildr; seeing the Doctor go to extremes and cross his limit again.

And, to finish this already HUGE list, the one scene that tears me up when it really isn’t that much of a big deal:

The Husbands of River Song - when River talks about how the Doctor would never love her, and he reveals himself to her.

Because in this moment, we get a glimpse from behind the scenes, when she’s not all bad-ass and impressing the Doctor. The lonely years, making her way through time and space, in love with an alien who sees everything in a bigger perspective. If anything, it’s so  relatable of how it is to love someone so deeply and know that they might even be incapable of loving you back. Sigh. Ok, better stop here before it gets too personal. 

And now here are some kittens, because even I need some cheering up at this point:

[lilydragonwrites]

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, day 7

Ship that could never be

This one is so difficult! What does the “ship that could never be” even mean? Is it a ship I don’t like? Is it some ship I wish that was canon, but isn’t? Is it something I ship, but would be a total trainwreck? Oh well... I guess I’ll have to interpret it myself, then. 

One ship that I find fascinating, but would never  wish upon my darlings in Doctor Who, is actually the endgame of Ten x Rose - more specifically, Time Lord Victorious!Ten x Rose.

Imagine if he decided to break laws of Time to save Rose? Imagine what would have happened if he left his Metacrisis alone in Pete’s world and Rose saw what the Doctor did to Donna right after? If the Doctor acted selfishly regarding his feelings, would he still be Rose’s Doctor? Would she be horrified, angry? Would she want to leave him after a while? Would he let her?

So yes, it’s a fascinating ship and I love reading stories about it, but poor Rose and poor Doctor, they don’t deserve to be like this...

[lilydragonwrites]

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, day 6

Favourite Monster/Villain.

I have the feeling that I’ll keep repeating characters and creatures during this challenge... Because really, many of them overlap. 

So, it all depends on how we interpret the word “monster”. If it’s a crude word for non-human creature, then if you listened to my ramblings yesterday you know about my love for all things Ood...

However, oods are not monsters! Apart from being non-human and having some scary tentacles, they’re just an oppressed species who has been mutilated and had their psychic defences lowered... 

So if the question is about monster or villain, then it implies that we’re looking for evil rather than strangeness, which brings me to another favourite who has already been featured in this challege:

Behold, Lils obsesses over the Master again! 

So why do I love them as a villain? Probably because of their unpredictability. You know a Dalek will go “EXTERMINATE!”, that a cyberman will go “DELETE!” and that Davros will spurt something about the species he created, but what will the Master do? 

Sing?

Will they help the Doctor and then betray him? Will they want to take over the world just to spite the Doctor? Will they create overly elaborate traps for the Doctor? 

Or will he be genuinely be desperate for help, even from the Doctor, or team up with him to save the world from something even more terrible than our adorable schemer?

Fourth Season showed us that the reason for the Master’s actions were the result of manipulation from the Time Lords, who planted the drumbeat as a signal into his mind when he was a child, but I don’t buy the whole mental manipulation = evil thing. This might have lead to his insanity, but not to his maliciousness...

(sorry, kiddo, you’ll be insane and evil from now on)

But either way, I love them as a villain and I would love to see more of them, be it in the past or the future, especially if he’s having flirty or deeply touching moments with the Doctor

Join the challenge! :)

[lilydragonwrites]

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, day 5

My favourite episode of all, which one day will be the basis for a paper about international law (I kid you not):

4x03 - Planet of the Ood

Seriously, what a great episode. It’s Donna and the Doctor at their best, and it brings complex and interesting issues. And the music! Don’t get me started on the music! 

In this episode, Donna and the Doctor go to the planet of the Oods. These tentacled darlings had been introduced earlier, when he was still with Rose - a slave species with a hive mind, especially susceptible to mind control. 

At the time, Rose commented on how strange it was, but neither her nor the Doctor went deeper into that matter (maybe because they had a huge black hole and Satan itself to worry about), but all the oods ended up dying in the end.

So now the Doctor and Donna get to the bottom of things, discovering the planet where they are born and enslaved, and confront many unpleasant truths. Donna is righteously appalled at their situation, but the Doctor points out that humanity isn’t so much better where they come from (”You don’t have slaves? Tell me, who made your clothes?”), and Donna can’t initially face to hear the pain the Oods are in: she asks the Doctor to hear their song of captivity, but it’s too much for her. Just watch that beautiful scene: 

To me, that’s Ten and Donna at their best: some serious character growth for Donna, who’s growing into this strong, compassionate person but who isn’t ready to face all the heaviness of the world, and the Doctor who feels so much of other people’s pain to the point that he might even become desensitised...

But the most interesting thing, in my opinion, is how they handle the Ood liberation: of course, Doctor and Donna save the day and help them, but they don’t do everything by themselves: the Ood were already rebelling in their non-violent, beautiful way, and their ultimate act of rebellion was turning their captor (and mutilator and torturer) into one of their own. THE BAD GUY TURNED INTO AN OOD, and now the other oods would take care of him and treat him well. I’m tearing up here, people. The ood are beautiful and I love them. And they’re great dancers. 

So there it is - character development, great music, interesting themes, beautiful creatures, struggle against oppression, and the ominous foreboding of Ten’s death: 

Join the challenge :)

[lilydragonwrites]

[lilydragonwrites]

The worst part of Pride each year is riding the subway late at night and seeing the gay guys, mostly the ones riding by themselves, slowly take off their rainbow stickers and beads and what-not in preparation for their walk alone in their neighborhood, doing their best to prevent the off-chance of being jumped. I saw one guy with a flag in his bag turn it upside down so it wouldn’t poke out.

So yeah, fuck that heterosexual pride day nonsense.

[lilydragonwrites]

There was never much levity at the Academy. All leisure time was given up to a quite conscious development of mental and physical skills, from telepathic meditation to learning the traditional waltzes (days of studying the steps in yellowing, dusty old tomes – they’d called them the ‘Foxtrots of Rassilon’) and swimming

from Tomb of Valdemar by Simon Messingham

I found another thing of Rassilon.

(via witharthurkirkland)

[lilydragonwrites]

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, day 4

NOTP

I don’t really have a huge NOTP in Doctor Who - I’m very easy-going when it comes to my own ships (as you’ve seen yesterday), and I’m always open to new possibilities. Really, if it’s well written, basically anything goes... 

But if you put a gun to my head and said “choose a ship that you don’t like much in this fandom, I’d say

- Ten x Donna (they’re my BROTP and the great thing about them is that they’re friends, no sexual tension there)

But if there’s one thing that makes me very uncomfortable (no matter if in Doctor Who or any other fandom) is RPF.

I mean, fictional characters depend on us to be brought to life, but real people have their own lives, their wants and needs.Someone who is in the public eye because of acting, performing for an audience or anything like that might be exposed to us in many ways, but we don’t really know them. I can tell a close friend that his current choice of partner might not be ideal, or that they’d be super cute with someone, but doing this with people whom I don’t know, and that didn’t give me permission to do so makes me cringe (unless it’s that super cracky spoofy pieces who are clearly sattirical and mostly involve Donald Trump).

Join the challenge! :)

[lilydragonwrites]

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I have three older brothers.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Wilson played first table on the chess team, Chester used to start crying every time he heard a sad song, Dan can really rock a cocktail dress and six-inch heels, and I wasn’t going to let anyone give them any shit for any of that.  So I had to learn to beat up people bigger than me pretty early on.”

[lilydragonwrites]

I remember when I thought people in their 20’s were adults. Now all of my friends are in their 20’s and everybody is just kind of fumbling around bumping into each other, trying to figure out where the free food is

[lilydragonwrites]

We looked for the Doctor, but he no longer exists. Not in any of his regenerations.

[lilydragonwrites]

I have a feeling this will become iconic in due time.  

[lilydragonwrites]

Doctor Who 30 Day Challenge, Day 3

OTP - Does it need to be just one?

Yes, I am a tortured being who has their soul split in two, because I’m incapable of having a single OTP - but since even the Doctor could have a biological metacrisis and get a human version of himself, so can I split my attention between Ten and Tentoo and consider it my OTP. So the first one, and the one that I write fanfic for is

Tentoo x Rose

Now, when I first watched Journey’s end, I mindlessly hated the ending: give Rose a human version of the Doctor and leave her? How dismissive is that?!? But then it got me thinking, and, in the end, this is the one scenario where Rose and the Doctor have a chance of a relationship in more equal terms, and the unseen dynamics of Rose and the Doctor in Pete’s world has the potential to be really beautiful. 

Because now Rose isn’t some wide-eyed ingenue, but a dimension-traveller in her own right, who had Torchwood training and probably acquired some engineering knowledge on the way. And the Doctor, apart from the matching lifespan and biology, is in a completely new universe - so his centuries of knowledge might only apply partially to Pete’s universe. 

So now there’s no “last-of-the-time-lords” or “you’ll-leave-me-in-the-end” or even “century-long-age-gap”: they still get what made them fall for each other, but with loads of baggage and angst to make it all interesting. (And then there’s the bonus that there’s no way Moffat or any future showrunner can ruin them, so it’s a pretty safe zone for fanfic writers)

That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the sweet dynamics of Nine x Rose or the tragic longing of Ten x Rose, but when it comes to Ten (and the other Doctors as well, let’s face it) there’s someone else I ship them with...

Doctor x Master

Yes, I went there. 

No, it’s not a lovely, potentially healthy relationship like Tentoo x Rose, but it’s a beautiful train wreck and I can’t look away.

Imagine that: they’re childhood friends (and sweethearts!), go through school together, survive stifling Time Lord society, make plans to travel the Universe together, and then something goes so terribly wrong that they end up chasing each other across Time and Space as bitter enemies...

Except when they’re not.

Which happens quite often, all things considered. In the end, I think they might even want the same thing, but with a crucial difference: 

So it’s tragic and quite possibly toxic, and it’s such a shame that it has only been made canon when the Master regenerated as a woman...

But regardless of gender, era or body, these two are a beautiful mess and I can’t get enough of them. 

Join the challenge! :) 

[lilydragonwrites]

[lilydragonwrites]

@nannyogg123 daddy!Alec!!!!